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Wikiloc sells 40% stake. Adara's climate fund. Bdeo raised €7.5m.

July 3, 2023 • Issue #377

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Startup funding news 💸

  • Girona-based Wikiloc, a bootstrapped company used by millions of people every month to plan hikes and sports routes, sold a 40% stake to investment firm Miura. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2006, Wikiloc has more than 12m users and 43m routes created by users on its platform
  • Reka, an AI startup co-founded by Basque engineer Mikel Artetxe, came out of stealth and announced a $58m round led by DST Global Partners. The mission of the company is to "advance science and build generative AI models for the benefit of humanity, organizations, and enterprises"
  • Madrid-based insurtech Bdeo raised €7.5m from various investors, including us at Kfund. Bdeo offers an AI-powered computer vision solution that facilitates the remote assessment of damages to vehicles and homes
  • Madrid-based fintech and cashflow management company Embat raised €5m, led by Samaipata. 4Founders and VentureFriends also participated in the round. More details here
  • Madrid-based Marsi Bionics, a startup that develops exoskeletons, raised €4.5m from Veronica Pascual (former CEO of robotics startup Asti), Orilla Asset Management and Ion Ion
  • Granada-based smart buildings startup DEBOS raised €1.5m in funding, led by Grupo Empresas Matutes
  • Madrid-based fintech startup ASN raised €1.5m from Inveready and Actyus
  • Other rounds of funding: Robingood, Hello, Oshun,

M&A activity 🎊

  • Indexa Capital could float on the BME Growth as early as mid July. The company doesn't plan to raise money in the transaction, providing instead liquidity to existing shareholders. Indexa has 64k clients and €1.7b in assets under management

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

  • Adara announced a new climate fund with a target size of €200m. Redeia (Red Electrica) will act as its main anchor LP. Adara is in the middle of the fundraising process and plans to make investments of at least €4m with the new fund
  • Also on the topic of climate, Telefonica Ventures published an article about their perspective on challenges, opportunities and the VC play in climate tech
  • La Informacion talked to Álvaro Lamo de Espinosa, managing partner of Arcano Partners, about the current fundraising and M&A climate. The firm says that it's seen record levels of activity in M&A interest and transactions

Startup news 💡

  • Getir, once one of the largest players in the quick commerce space, announced that it will shut down operations in Spain, meaning that more than 1,500 of its employees, riders and pickers will lose their jobs
  • Since Wallbox went public through a SPAC, Francisco Riberas (co-founder of automotive giant Gestamp) has invested €73m in the company, becoming one of the largest shareholders with an almost 9% stake. In the company's last stock offering, which took place just a few weeks ago, Riberas invested an additional $20m. Wallbox's stock is down 78% from is all time high and +3% this year. Also last week it was revealed that executives and employees of the company have sold in recent times a bunch of stock to compensate payments to Hacienda (something that is quite common)
  • Travel company Destinia said that in the first six months of 2023 sales have increased by 20% compared to a year ago and that it expects to close 2023 with €225m in sales
  • I don't know what's going on at Domestika and I don't know the company very well either, but it's all quite strange: the company announced its third round of layoffs in a year, which will affect more than 50% of its current 87 employees. Domestika raised €97m in early 2022 at a valuation of more than $1b
  • Profile of solar panel company Sunhero, which expects to reach €20m in sales this year. A couple of months ago we had its CEO on our podKast, Christopher Cederskog, where he explained the history of the company and talked at length about the Spanish energy sector
  • Capchase, the revenue-based financing startup with headquarters in Madrid and the US, announced that it has surpassed its goal of providing more than $100m in financing to female-led startups and and underrepresented minority founders
  • Three Spanish Impact startups doing marine life restoration (Ocean Ecostructures ), smart agrivoltaics (Blowind ) and wind-powered generators (Powerfultree )
  • Voicemod launched an “AI Humans” collection of real-time AI voice changers. The new launch offers 20 human-realistic options trained on recordings from a variety of professional voice actors
  • Startup profiles:
  • Crescenta: fintech

Big company news 🏦

  • Tesla was reportedly “very angry” when its plans for a potential factory in Valencia leaked and it has abandoned the project. According to the leak, Tesla was in negotiations with Valencia to invest €4.5b to open a manufacturing plant in the region. More details here
  • BBVA plans to hire at least 1,000 "tech people" in Spain this year
  • Iberia to allow passengers to track in real time the status and location of their suitcases via its own app
  • CaixaBank is preparing the launch of FXWallet, a service that will allow companies to open virtual accounts to receive and make payments in 50 different currencies

Interesting reads 🤓

  • Cinco Dias published a profile of Carina Szpilka, co-founder and colleague of mine at Kfund: "una inversora profesional en busca de aventuras"
  • Ignacio Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, wrote "La estrategia del océano azul y el software: ¿mito o realidad?" and also published "Las integraciones como canal de crecimiento"
  • Antonio Rull, senior PM at BeBanjo, wrote "Is there an expiration date for the role of Product Manager?"

Podcasts 🎧

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